As someone who's spent most of his career working in Direct Response and Direct Marketing, I've been fascinated with the GEICO campaign, ever since it adopted its iconic slogan.
That's because "15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance" is the kind of headline you'd see in a Direct Response ad. It's a call to action that promises a concrete benefit. It appeals to your rational mind.
Yet, at the same time, this message is usually part of an ad that's so wacky and ironic that it seems to make fun, not only of Direct Response, but all advertising. It makes you laugh. In other words, like great Brand Advertising, the creative also appeals, delightfully so, to your emotions.
But instead of being at odds, in these commercials reason and emotion, Direct Response and Brand, play off each other in witty ways. In fact, one enhances the other.
To refresh your memory, here's an assortment of spots from a campaign that aired over the past couple of years. They all play with the idea that the GEICO slogan is old news by now.
What I love about these commercials is that they show a brand that doesn't need to take itself so seriously. One that accepts that you're probably pretty bored with its message. So much so, that it attaches a goofy side story to its slogan, as a compensation to keep you entertained.
But by acknowledging your resistance, GEICO disarms it. The brand seems unpretentious. Friendly, even. And you're less likely to resent its intrusion into your TV entertainment time.
And the fact that the little stories these commercials tell have nothing to do with car insurance, makes a subversive point about the nature of brand advertising. Often the way such ads connect dramatic images to their banal products seems like a real stretch.
By poking fun at such advertising habits, the GEICO spots seem more down to earth. More real. Just the kind of personality you'd want from an insurance company.
In any case, the end result of this campaign is that it repeats the same old slogan again, yet, through the magic of its creative, keeps it new. This is in keeping with the brand's approach. Here's how Michael Lee, from Forbes, analyzed the GEICO campaign:
"The GEICO way is not about keeping your audience interested in your brand by coming up with a bunch of fresh messages. It's about delivering a consistent message in a fresh and engaging way."
WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU RUN OUT OF OFFERS
In the world of Direct Response, often the way you get a lift is by changing the offer--usually making it sweeter in some way.
But what happens when you don't have a new and better offer?
The GEICO campaign offers a suggestion: why not offer the same old thing you always do, but in a different way?
I remember once I worked on creative for an entertainment related publication. Instead of constantly running new offers, we often repeated the same ones, but in different voices.
To do this, first we devised themes for our creative--based on popular culture figures that we knew appealed to our brand's audience. Then, depending on the theme, we communicated our offers in the lingo of everyone from pirates, to zombies, to super heroes, just to name a few.
These creative executions were more colorful, and more integrated with the brand, than standard direct response fare.
But even more importantly, they always got a lift.
